Google goes to 'Android Market' in App Store challenge

Stephen Withers
Friday, 29 August 2008 05:42

Your IT - Mobility

We've seen how successful Apple's App Store has been as a conduit between developers with $US30 million in sales and 60 million downloads in the first month. Now Google aims to follow suit with the announcement of the Android Market. Why 'Market' rather than 'Store'?

Android is Google and friends' attempt at creating a world-beating mobile phone platform to challenge Symbian, WinMo, LiMo, iPhone and others for telecommunications and handheld computing supremacy, and the Androids are about to invade!

The first Android phone is tipped to arrive in mid-September - the HTC Dream G1 reportedly coming first to T-Mobile in the US - despite earlier reports suggesting a late 2008/early 2009 debut.

But getting the phone into people's hands is one thing, making it easy to find, download and install applications is another. Apple's success with the App Store - combined with some of the shortcomings observed by developers - has provided the Android team with a template.

Eric Chu, mobile platform program manager at Google, said "we feel that developers should have an open and unobstructed environment to make their content available."

The point being that - unlike Apple - Google does not intend to act as a gatekeeper for Android apps. Anyone will be able to register as a merchant and then upload programs and other types of content to the Android Market.

What's in store for Android Market? See page two.